Remove ads

Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Fourthspartan56 said:
To be fair to the "Nazis were elected into power" side, it's not entirely wrong. Getting 43% of the vote isn't bad when there are multiple major parties. Particularly when you're a party that was as marginal as the pre-WW2 NSDAP was.

I doubt I'd go as far as credit them with some broad democratic mandate, particularly given how sweeping their changes were, but it's hard to deny that they lacked significant popular support.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Under the German system, 43% is not bad at all, most german parties don't manage that nowadays. It's quite a lot less impressive when you consider the amount of voter-suppression and -intimidation done by the SA, just like socialist and social democratic members of the Reichstag were intimidated into not doing anything against stuff like the Ermächtigungsgesetz used by the Nazis to consolidate power. Of course, I don't wanna downplay the amount of support the NSDAP had in the general population, which was far from small, but the idea that the majority of Germans were in favor of the NSDAP is simply wrong. The Non- or even Anti-Nazis were in the majority, both in the general population and among politicians. There was simply an appalling failure to unite against the NSDAP and prevent its rise to power, both between socialist and social democrats and between them and moderate conservatives, who, while often quite vile on their own, were far more benign than the Nazis, and, broadly, didn't actually want them to achieve the amount of power they eventually had.
 
dcd said:
But is that even possible?One cannot kill an idea.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is high-grade bullshit. If ideas could not be killed there wouldn't be endangered and extinct faiths, dead languages, lost books, dead memes, obsolete ideologies and trivia. The ideas die when the conditions that sustain them are no longer present. They can be counteracted by organized action.

dcd said:
For how long though?And how far are you willing to go?
There are no easy solutions.Because as a great man once said:There can be no final revolution.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
How long? If necessary, indefinitely. "No fascism allowed" is a policy that needs to be maintained.
And, well, there are never easy solutions, but I'd rather have a hard time stopping fascism than have a hard time surviving in a fascist society. I am living in a country that tries very hard to become fascist (or already is, if you ask some people) right now, and I don't recommend it to anyone.
 
Just chiming in to say that the conservatives who said "vote for me or else Hitler gets in" then turned around and entered into government with Hitler.
 
Last edited:
Also for all his electorial success Hitler had failed to gain power and the November 1932 election resulted in a strong fall in the Nazi vote. He was then finally appointed by essentially a cabal in a move as much about fear of the Reds as his democratic mandate.

brokenTower said:
Just chiming in to say that the conservatives who said "vote for me or else Hitler gets in" then turned around and entered into government with Hitler.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Very true, "We've hired him"

Also post war efforts to suppress fascism were pretty effective. It's taken 75+ years for a fascist party to regain power in one of those states (you know where) and due to vastly better checks and balances they're in no position to bring back Il Duce even with their boss in the big chair.
 
Fascism only continues to exist because it's promoted by the United States under the guise of anticommunism. Were the international fascist movement subjected to the same hostilities the left is it would die within a decade.
 
brokenTower said:
Fascism only continues to exist because it's promoted by the United States under the guise of anticommunism. Were the international fascist movement subjected to the same hostilities the left is it would die within a decade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is significantly too reductive.

If fascism faced the same hostility that leftism received it would be weaker but there would still be elements of national bourgeois who would benefit from supporting it. The United States is powerful but it is not omnipotent, it can't just Thanos snap whatever ideology it wishes.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
This is significantly too reductive.

If fascism faced the same hostility that leftism received it would be weaker but there would still be elements of national bourgeois who would benefit from supporting it. The United States is powerful but it is not omnipotent, it can't just Thanos snap whatever ideology it wishes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because otherwise socialism and the Left in general would not exist. In anycase overt US support for Fascism ended with the cold war.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
Though I have to wonder, would we be extending the same benefit of the doubt to right-wing appeasers?

Fascist ideological tenacity may not be as obvious but at this point the genocidal nature of their ideology has become eminently clear. Even if Nazism was stopped from raping and mass murdering its way through the Soviet Union it would still have a large number of victims to murder. Such as every Germany Jew, queer person, and socialist.

I don't think suppressing the pacifists is necessary, they clearly are not a significant political force, but in terms of consequences and priority their ideology is still genuinely vile. They would prefer to give the fascists more time to murder innocents just because they dislike war. I'm not going to pretend that pacifism never has any good points but WW2 is genuinely the worst possible time to be a fanatical pacifist. I doubt they're individually bad people but that doesn't make their political project any less unacceptable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The ideal scenario in their eyes would be exertion of power via "nondirect" means (embargoes, propaganda, moral appeals, social agitation) to spark destabilization and regime change. To their credit, it's not entirely implausible. The Nazis derived their legitimacy off of the prospect of delivering victory to the German Volk so, in their view, the Wehrmacht being pushed back all the way to Silesia and Pomerania with nothing to show for it but a whole lot of dead sons/husbands/brothers would probably do most of the work, and a homegrown revolution through nonviolence would need just a push. To say nothing about how the economy would be by that time. Extremely naive to believe that regime change can be achieved through "nonviolence" on part of the German citizenry even if that all else plays out perfectly (as if the Nazi leadership wouldn't need to be dragged out of a smoldering Reichstag as corpses in any case), but nothing to imply the pacifists are okay with German Jews, Leftists, LGBTQ+, etc. being thrown under the bus.

What the pacifists seem to be primarily concerned with is that a push into Germany, unlike a defensive/repealing action, would let the Nazis be able to unite an otherwise reluctant populace to mobilize against an invading foreign army, thus necessitating bloodshed beyond what is necessary. If you earnestly believe the goodness in people can win out in the end, what's the point of tearing down Berlin to the last stone when Berlin itself can rise up?
 
Last edited:
brokenTower said:
Fascism only continues to exist because it's promoted by the United States under the guise of anticommunism. Were the international fascist movement subjected to the same hostilities the left is it would die within a decade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Fascism will exist as long as capitalism keeps ensuring the conditions that allow it to rise up repeat over and over, same goes for left wing ideologies (which is why they still exist globally despite America's best efforts), Americans helping fascists however sure did help them recover faster
 
WIIHAPPYFEW said:
Was I the only guy to catch that Jello fucking Biafra eventually becomes a major party leader
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
TBF, he's pretty obscure compared to other politicos and activists, even considering Aelita used his name for her AH.com forum handle. Not to mention how many forum names often seem like a random collection of words only understandable to the user.
 
Time for my biannual rereading of the timeline. I check in every several months or so to see the new posts and I never remember all the details, but that just means I get to reread it.

The timeline is painfully masturbatory a lot of the time but it still holds up as a damn fine piece of AH.
 
Last edited:
I was rereading the 1942 Events Timeline and saw this:
Miss Teri said:
October 12th: While working to oppose recruitment efforts and protesting British rule, Gandhi is shot by a Hindu nationalist and supporter of the Japanese-backed Azad Bharat.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Did Ghandi die here? It only says he was shot, but doesn't say what happens to him.
 
Emote Control said:
Those elections were rife with fraud, force and even assasssination, carried out by the Nazis, according to every book on World War 2 I've ever read.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
True. The last completely free Weimar election was probably 1930 or even 1928. After that the Nazi's and Communist's are to powerful and ensure intimidation happened and the chancellorship is in Hindenburg's gift anyway so no one was getting it legitimately.

Even then the Nazi's never won an outright majority until March 1933 (two months after being in power and with a number of other parties already banned) and due to refusing to being junior partners in any coalition (or usually to join one at all) could not come to power by legitimate means. Hitler was only called for because Von Papen hated von Schleicher and thought he could use Hitler as a puppet with himself back in power (we all know how that went).

Once again Hitler was "appointed" not elected and that only happened after the Nazi's had passed their electorial peak. Without that grubby deal the party was flat broke, further from power than ever and starting to hemorrhage members. The likely outcome would have been Hitler lost control of the SA during the summer (due to them not getting paid) and that (as well as Communist activities) finally giving the Heer an excuse for a coup to "end this disorder."

That ends with the Nazi's banned, military government (that while nasty probably won't do worse than Anschluss and going after the corridor) and Hitler probably dumped back over the border as an undesirable alien. (With his citizenship papers ignored/"lost" and Austrian grumbling ignored as well until it becomes the German state of Austria a few years later).
 
Last edited:
It seems to me extremely naive to assume a military dictatorship of Germany isn't eventually going to start shit, lol.

Its a different war, and they might do a worse job actually in the soviet union, but they're still inevitably going to start shit.
 
veteranMortal said:
It seems to me extremely naive to assume a military dictatorship of Germany isn't eventually going to start shit, lol.

Its a different war, and they might do a worse job actually in the soviet union, but they're still inevitably going to start shit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As I said they'll do Anschluss and go after the corridor (and possibly the bits lost to Poland in general) but lacking Nazi ideology they're not going to try and take over all of Europe while committing genocide. They're certainly not going to be stupid enough to imitate Napoleon in Russia.

Broadly a military dictatorship would be the second Reich reborn. Not terribly nice but probably something the West can live with as long as it respects Locano (especially with Stalin about) and one much more cautious in its military adventures.

Remember the people taking over were senior officers last time and OTL were very worried by Hitler's plans (to the point of plotting a coup) so absent him they won't gamble as badly.

Also while they'd probably overheat it I don't know if they'd outright burn out the economy for military aims as he did, that would at least slow them down. Possibly long enough for the presence of the big bad commies to force reconciliation with the West.
 
Silent Runner said:
I would not try to debate someone who literally calls themselves a "MAGA Communist" in their signature.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Sure Nazism can be argued to be an extreme third way movement (Hitler nicked most of his economic policies from the SU for instance) but MAGA is pretty explicitly Fascist these days and obviously Communism is the exact opposite.

Which incidentally is probably part of why an army run Germany will be more careful about honking off the Entente powers completely. As a conventional right wing dictatorship they still hate Communism but lacking Hitler's fanaticism they'll recognise the odds of them doing something about it on their own are very low. Hence beef with Poland (the Eastern border was left out of Locano anyway) , take over Austria (not allowing union in 1919 was vindictive anyway) and probably leave the Czech's alone (they're not German and binding them with trade is probably more useful than trying to sit on them). Then present yourself as an anti communist shield as Stalin's crimes become more well known in the late 30's.

They'll probably have to restore democracy eventually but probably more along the line of Thailand with them deciding which parties are legal (which given their antics won't include the Nazi's) for a permanent right wing majority.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top